The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1887-02-18

indifference to sunshine when it is possible
to live and sleep in sunny rooms. Such in
difference is attended with serious danger.
In the choice Of apartments, anything and
everything within reason ought to be sac
rificed 10 the necessity of having the living
and sleeping where they can every
day be purified by the sun. Instead of hav-
ing the guest-chamber and parlor in the
shine, they should be given the shady side
of the house; for, in comparison to the
family rooms, they are but little used
SIN tie health Of women, children, and
invalids who, during the cold months,
spend so much time indoors it makes a
in which they live are in sunshine and
shadow. Look at the faces of miners, of
clerks who are immured in dark Offices of
women and children who hardly see the
sun in the winter. How faded, colorless,
and unhealthy they are in comparison with
the faces Of those who will have sunshine
indoors and out
A New York merchant noticed, in the
course of years, that each successive book
keeper gradually lost his health. and f.
nally died of consumption, however yigor-
GUS and robust he was on entering his SER
vice. At length it occurred to him that
the little rear room where the books were
kept opened into back yard, so surround
ed by high walls, that no sunshine came
into it from one years end to another.
An upper room, well-lighted, was imme-
diately prepared, and bis clerks had uni
form good health ever after.
\ familiar case to general readers is de-
rived from medical works where an entire
English family became i'll and all remedies
seemed to fail of their usual results, when
accidently window-glass of the family
room was broken in cold weather. 1t was
not repaired, and forthwith there was a
marked improvement in the health of the
inmate. The physician at once traced the
connection, discontinued his medicines,
and ordered the window pane should not
be replaced.
A French lady became i'll. The most
eminent physicians of her time were called
in, but failed to restore her. AT length
Dnpueytren, the Napoleon Of physie, was
consulted. lie noticed that she lived in a
dim room, into which the sun never shone,
the house being situated in enc Of the mar
n 7
more airy and cheerful apartments. and
'sall her complaints vanished"
The lungs of dog become differentiated
(eonsnmptiye) in a few weeks il kept con-
fined in dark cellar. The most common
plant grows pale, spindley, and scraggling
if no sunlight falls upon it. The greatest
medical names in France OF the last GEN.
fury regarded sunshine aud pure air as
equal agents in restoring and maintaining
health
From these facts, which cannot be dis
puted, the most common mind should con-
clude that cellars and rooms on the north
side of a building, or apartments into
which the sun does not Immediately shine
should never be occupied as family rooms
or chambers, or as libraries or studies.
Such apartments are only fit for ''stowage"
or purposes which never require persons
to remain in them over few moments at
a time And every intelligent and humane
parent will arrange that the family room
and the chambers shall be the most COM
modious, lightest and brightest apartment
in his dwelling.
Above all, sunshine should be given TO
the sick. The progress Of the illness and
the efforts of the remedies will then be
thousandfold more favorable. Why do
constructors of hospitals use every ingen-
uity to secure the greatest possible amount
of sunshine? Because experience has
shown that the death-rate is less, the du-
ration of disease shorter, and the patients
far happier and more cheerful in the wards
which have sunshine for the greatest num-
Der of hours during the day. We hang
our bird-cages in the window, out Of doors,
if possible, because, deprived of the sun,
the birds droop, perhaps die. And yet we
forget that to human beings the sun is just
as necessary. There is more tonic life
giving effect in sunshine than in any other
drug known to man.